The following is a contrived correspondence between a meetup organizer and a critical attendee.
Firstly, I’d like to say that I have attended several of your meetups and have learned a lot and do appreciate them but at the same time I believe that everything you do is wrong.
The food is terrible. Pizza is not healthy and I’m allergic to wheat so I can’t eat it and it makes me feel unwelcome.
Why aren’t there more talks on coffeescript? Nobody even uses JavaScript anymore.
The RSVP is always full yet half the seats are empty, why do you fail at life?
There is always beer but I’m allergic to wheat so I can’t drink it. You should just stop having alcohol.
Also, semicolons.
I’d like to thank you for attending my meetup which I organize by myself and make no money from.
I don’t really taste food, I just sort of throw it down my mouth, so eating pizza every week seems fine to me. People like pizza, don’t they?
We try to balance the content fairly which means we give just as much time to lunatics who use fringe compile-to languages as we give people who write npm and other software used by thousands of people.
People RSVP and then don’t show up, it’s not my fault. But I’m going to keep using an RSVP system and pretend it does work even though only 30% of the people that RSVP show up. I see no alternative.
Nothing bad has ever happened to anyone from drinking, you can look it up on wikipedia. One time we ran out of beer and all the geeks stopped talking to each other so I’m pretty sure it’s necessary.
comma first.
I don’t really care about why you like pizza or think beer should be allowed. I would appreciate it if you could tailor these decisions more to my specific dietary requirements. Anything less and I’ll assume you are trying to exlude me.
I’m also pretty sure that you hate women because I don’t see many at your meetup. I can only assume this is because you have no harassment policy posted on your website. If you posted a policy you would have an equal share of men and women at your meetup.
tabs > spaces.
You are free to bring your own food or wheat-free alcohol to any of my meetups.
Women in technology is a very large problem and the turnout at my meetup seems to reflect the general representation of women locally. I don’t hate women, I’m married to one and she even helps me run the meetup, maybe you saw her.
Tabs mixed with spaces.
TABS MIXED WITH SPACES! You aren’t qualified to be running anything.
I am a man but I am offended on behalf of women by the fact that you organize this meetup with a woman who isn’t a proper “geek.”
Bring my own food? No matter how much I’m compensated in this industry compared to literally any other industry I could have possibly worked in, I am offended at the notion that I might have to buy my own drink and food and that you won’t accommodate me.
If you are so offended at the way I run this then you should start your own meetup.
I can’t, too busy crushing code, thanks for nothing.